CHAPTER XIV
THE RESTORATION AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY
“Thence to Whitehall; where, in the Duke’s chamber, the King come and stayed an hour or two laughing at Sir W. Petty, who was there about his boate,[238] and at Gresham College in general; at which poor Petty was, I perceive, at some loss, but did argue discreetly, and bear the unreasonable follies of the King’s objections and other bystanders with great discretion; and offered to take oddes against the King’s best boates, but the King would not lay, but cried him down with words only. Gresham College he mightily laughed at, for spending time in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they sat.”—Pepys’s Diary, February 1, 1664.
“Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest promis’d Land,
And from the Mountains-top of his Exalted Wit
Saw it himself and shew’d us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover Worlds and Conquer too: